On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 09:54:10PM +0100, Tim Hutt wrote: > I've been looking for a good free EDA software for ages, and currently use > Designspark PCB, which is freeware but not open source (although the only > limitation is an unobtrusive RS splash advert on startup). It is ok though > - and orders of magnitude better than Eagle. I tried gEDA years ago and it > was worthless.
*How* do you survive with that toy of designspark? :P the wire drag in schematic is fun however. > Anyway, I've been following CERN's work on Kicad, and thought I'd give > Kicad a try. These sorts of programs always seem to fail on basic usability > things (like how to copy/paste) so I recorded my first ever Kicad session! OK, there is a thing with CADs in general: *forget* the office usability guidelines; CADs are optimized for workflow speed, not consistency with common usability guidelines. So you need a little more time to learn them but then you take a lot less time to do the work; they have put toolbars and menus in autocad but it's not supposed to be used that way: *everyone* go with the command line, it's fasted :D on the extremes look at Blender, Maya and... vi (ok, that's not a CAD but the idea is the same). > It's 30 mins. Somewhat low quality youtube (it downscaled 1024p to 720p > stupidly): OK, I'll look at it. > of the same crazy usability issues that seem to plague all EDA apps (failed > the copy/paste test!), it did seem fairly clean and non-buggy and fixing Copy/paste is rarely useful on a pcb (a little more on the schematic) so it's low priority *and* however can't be a normal copy/paste anyway :D The correct way to do it on eeschema for example is 'D'uplicate for single parts and shift-drag for blocks. I agree, however, that area could use some improvement. -- Lorenzo Marcantonio Logos Srl _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
